The Local SEO landscape is rapidly evolving. To make certain each location is current, effective, and has every opportunity to stand out form the competition, brands (and their agencies) must be constantly vigilant to maintain data accuracy, revisiting their approaches when necessary.

Here are five key reasons why your listing on Google My Business (GMB) should not just be set up and forgotten about:

Anyone Can Suggest Edits Your Data

It is hard for customers to trust the hours shown on a GMB listing if it doesn’t have recent owner-added photos, or if it’s not taking advantage of any new features like Google Posts, appointment URLs, or the booking module. Why? Because it most likely means the business isn’t paying attention to its listing.

And if it isn’t paying attention to its listing, the information could very well be incorrect. Google relies on signals from other data sources and the public to provide accurate information. Anyone (including your company's competitors) can suggest edits to a listing, and if you’re not there to catch it, incorrect information may appear.

If you don’t want customers showing up at the wrong hours to your business, or to a wrong location altogether, be proactive and actively manage the details of your listing.

New Features Pop Up Often  

It’s rare that Google will alert individual users or companies when it’s added a new feature that you can use to better optimize your listing. For instance, Google released appointment URLs, menu URLs, a services section, expanded the business description, built out an Q&A section, and added new categories and dozens of new attributes.

Even when you take advantage of significant feature updates such as Google Posts, you still need to monitor progress and make changes to ensure that your campaign is a success. Google is constantly changing the exposure received by Posts. Just because something worked well, or didn't provide an impact, it doesn't mean this will continue.

Also, because many features are released based on business category, make sure to stay in touch with your LocalClarity Client Success Analyst since you may have features (especially new attributes) available in your account that others aren’t aware of yet.

Keep Up with Your Competitors

Your most aggressive competitors are -- or soon will be -- taking full advantage of every tool Google has to offer.

If you start to fall behind on recent local search updates, your competition could be utilizing GMB to take advantage of the new appointment URL links, post menus, and listing special offers via Google Posts. They might be using the Q&A section as their own business FAQ section to highlight their unique value position.

If your competitor is tech savvy, or works with a local search savvy agency, they could already be way ahead of you when it comes to new GMB features. Research your competition often and see how they’ve optimized their listings. This will give you a good sense of what you should (and shouldn’t) be doing.

Prevent False Ownership Takeovers and Spam Reviews

There are more than 70,000 inquires on the Google My Business forum from people saying that someone else gained access to their business listing and won’t give it back. Though this is now less common than it used to be, it’s possible for a competitor to gain control of your listing simply because you weren’t paying enough attention to deny their request for ownership.

Take this example into consideration: A competitor finds that one of your listing ranks above theirs in a Google Maps search. He figures, “Why not try to claim their listing and make it my own?” So they requests ownership of your listing. To prevent false ownership takeovers like this, Google will send your business an email to confirm or deny this account from getting access.

If you’re not getting notices for all locations from LocalClarity, you won’t see the notifications to be able to deny it directly in GMB. After no reply from you for seven days, the competitor can get access to your business listing.

Show Customers Your Data is Up To Date

It's critically important to let your customers know that your data is current. A great way to do that is to set special holiday hours whenever possible.

Don't let Google cause confusion with customers or encourage the public to try to correct the hours of your locations. As an example, the image below show what's presented for a pharmacy in Sydney, Australia that didn't provide updated holiday hours for the Queen's Birthday.

If you have any questions please feel free to reach out to us at [email protected] for more assistance.